“No way,” I said. “Whatever’s going on, it’s real.”
“I’m not saying it’s not real. I just think it’s more complicated than the stomach flu. I think you’re probably having panic attacks.”
A panic attack is roughly defined as the abrupt onset of intense fear which peaks in approximately ten minutes and includes at least four of sixteen possible symptoms, the worst of which are sweating, trembling, choking, nausea, fear of going crazy, fear of dying, the urge to flee, and intense dread that something terrible is going to happen.
Although we don’t hear about panic attacks very often (besides on HBO’s The Sopranos, in which they plague mob boss Tony Soprano), the “spells” are fairly common. In fact, one out of every fourteen people will experience a panic attack in his or her lifetime. In Tony’s case, the attacks are precipitated by an inciting event, such as eating antipasto that reminds him of a gruesome finger-chopping incident. In many other cases, the attacks seem to just come out of nowhere.
Although a panic attack in itself is not dangerous, it is terrifying, and people who’ve had attacks often live in fear of them. Such dread can lead to phobias, depression, substance abuse, medical complications, and even suicide.
No one really knows what causes panic attacks. Some research suggests they occur when a “suffocation alarm mechanism” in the brain erroneously fires, falsely reporting that death is imminent. Why this happens is unclear, but according to the American Psychological Association, there does seem to be a connection with major, potentially stressful life transitions such as graduating from college, getting married, or having a child. Looking back, I wonder whether our imminent return to the “real world” after a summer of adventure triggered my attacks, or perhaps it was fear that, given the weather conditions, we might not reach Canada at all. Certainly Travis’ warnings about mountain lions (also known as cougars or pumas) didn’t help to put my mind at ease about anything.
Snippets of a dream I’d had just before my first panic attack were coming back to me. In it, I am hiking alone in dark woods, the type of woods where evil might lurk. I feel small and vulnerable, like a lost child. Suddenly, I can see myself from a great distance; I can also see a cougar, eight feet long from nose to black-tipped tail, creeping behind me, occasionally stopping in a crouched position, all the while intently staring at the back of my neck. His tail is twitching and his ears are erect. I realize that he’s been stalking me, stalking me for miles. His legs start pumping gently up and down as he gets ready to leap. I scream to warn myself—and then wake up, screaming.
Over the past few years, mountain lion attacks in North America have increased dramatically. Between 1991 and 1999, there were thirty-six recorded mountain lion attacks in North America. Seven of these were fatal. Two major theories are used to explain why such incidents are on the rise. First, as suburbs continue to sprawl, mountain lion habitat is disappearing. This means that more and more humans and lions find themselves in the same place at the same time. Second, conservation laws that prohibit the killing of any mountain lion except in self-defense are blamed for allowing the population to grow and to become increasingly aggressive.
According to the Mountain Lion Foundation of Texas, mountain lions are more likely to prey on people who are less than four feet tall. Children between the ages of five and eight have been the targets of greater than sixty percent of mountain lion attacks on humans. Additionally, the majority of lion–human confrontations occur when a person is alone. Given that Duffy and I often hiked a hundred or more yards apart, this fact did little to alleviate my fears. Neither did the knowledge that while I was over four feet tall, I was still rather petite (weighing in, at the time, at a meek 105 pounds).
One of the things that scared me the most about mountain lions was that they have a nasty habit of silently tracking people, sometimes following hikers for days. During this time, if the opportunity arises for the kill, a mountain lion will do so from behind, with a bite to the neck that severs the spinal cord.
While statistics may show that an American is ten times more likely to be killed by a domestic dog than a cougar, more and more PCT thru-hikers are seeing mountain lions. In fact, in an informal survey of articles written about the trail, I found that the majority of hikers interviewed mentioned at least one mountain lion encounter, often occurring at twilight, one of the cougar’s favorite hunting times.
I didn’t think that my fear of lions was causing my panic attacks, but I did think it contributed to stretching my nerves tight—so tight that, sometimes, at night, they snapped.
The forty miles between the Mike Urich Shelter and Snoqualmie Pass are said to be the ugliest on the entire PCT, a checkerboard of clear-cuts, punctuated by muddy roads deeply rutted and churned by logging trucks whose wheels have jagged, earth-shredding teeth. We tried walking on these roads for a while, thinking they’d get us through the tortured landscape a little faster, but due to the shoe-sucking mud and crevasselike tire tracks, our progress was slow and we returned to the overgrown trail instead. Weather Carrot’s constant banter occupied us for a while, and as long as the wind was blowing the right way, his company was a pleasant diversion. Still, we tired of fighting our way through dense huckleberry bushes that dumped water down our legs and into our shoes. My toes started each day white and achy then turned blue and became so cold that I couldn’t feel them at all. We needed to get to Snoqualmie Pass, the lowest and busiest pass in Washington’s Cascades, quickly. There we would find a motel.
My panic attacks and Raynaud’s were wearing us both down, and we hoped that a night in town might warm me up and jump-start me out of whatever funk it was that I’d fallen into, or at least that sunnier skies might be on the horizon. At Snoqualmie Pass, we checked into the Summit Inn. After taking a scalding-hot shower, I called my parents from the pay phone in the lobby.
“I got a note from Meadow Ed,” my mother said almost immediately upon answering the phone.
“Meadow Ed?” I said. “What the—? How the heck did he find you?”
“He returned a card I sent to Independence for you with a note that you’d left the day before and looked well. Who is this Meadow Ed?”
“He’s a trail angel, Mom, he looks after us hikers.”
I was astounded; trail magic was powerful enough to stretch around the world!
“We bought a map,” my mother continued, “and have been following you on it. Where are you now?”
“Snoqualmie Pass in Washington.”
“Oh yes, I see it. You’re almost finished!”
“Yup, we’re almost there. I’ll be seeing you again soon,” I said, and I knew I would.
There was a quick pause, and just before she hung up the phone my mother said, “And give our love to Duffy.”
“I will, Mom. We’ll call you from Canada.” Turning away from the phone I steadied myself. For more than a year my parents had rarely talked about Duffy. Relief at having him acknowledged in a loving way—having us acknowledged—washed over me, and I happily headed to the inn’s restaurant to meet Duffy. I found him talking with several other thru-hikers—Weather Carrot, the Abominably Slow Man, and Feather Dave, whose pack was as light as a feather.
When we left Snoqualmie Pass the next morning it wasn’t raining—not one drop. The warmth of the sun on my face felt like the tender touch of a long lost friend. Climbing out of the pass and toward the high ridges of the Alpine Lake Wilderness we gained 3,000 feet in eleven miles. But despite the physical strain, I couldn’t stop smiling. The sun was out, we’d spent a panic-free night in a soft bed, my relationship with my parents was on an upswing, and, finally, we were entering the North Cascades—America’s Alps.
Unbroken by rivers and traversed by only a handful of roads, the North Cascades are characterized by craggy peaks, ice-plucked cliffs, serrated ridges, plunging valleys with rain forests at their bottoms, and 750 glaciers. Clinton C. Clarke described the landscape of the North Cascades as “the most primitive and roughest in t
he contiguous United States.”
Atop an exposed ridge, we looked down into the Alpine Lakes Wilderness and ahead to Canada. At 5,000 feet, the trees were thin and the cliffs severe. I was sweating and relishing it. Duffy grinned and timed his steps with the beat of the music on his Walkman. We had seventy-five miles to cover before our next re-supply, in Skykomish; with weather like this we’d easily be there in three days and two nights—or so we thought.
Our first night in the North Cascades we camped under a dense cover of trees on moist, soft duff. We’d hiked twenty-two miles since noon and were feeling quite giddy. In fact, we were so drunk with sunshine and views that when clouds started to block out the moon, we barely even noticed.
In the early morning, though, I did notice gumdrop-size raindrops pelting our cooking pot (which I’d left on a tree stump), making metallic pings.
Over the next three days we walked approximately fifty-three miles, but to be honest, I don’t remember that much about them. I mean, other than the views we got on our first day out, I never got the big picture of the area. Actually, my only picture of the area was taken through the small oval opening of my rain hood, and it looked like rain, sleet, and snow. I’d like to be able to write a vivid description of the North Cascades—really, I would—but all I can offer are visions of slushy puddles, drips off my hood, and a solid wall of gray cloud on the horizon.
I think the hardest thing about hiking in the rain is that you can’t stop. Taking a break is not only pointlessly unenjoyable, but it’s also dangerous. As soon as we stopped moving, our damp bodies caught a chill. Duffy’s lips turned blue and I shivered. For three consecutive rainy days between Snoqualmie Pass and Skykomish, we hiked for six to eight hours straight, without sitting down, without lunch, and without feeling dry or warm. In our sneakers, our Smartwool socks were soggy sponges—the tired, dirty kind that linger by the laundry room sink for a while before finally getting thrown away. Our fleece mittens were equally soaked.
I was accustomed to getting Raynaud’s in my fingers and toes; their bloodless pallor was a familiar sight. But on those rainy days, my entire palms went pale and I couldn’t feel the cork handles of my trekking poles. In my sodden shoes, the Raynaud’s was creeping across my feet, too. At night, while my panic attacks had thankfully subsided (I must have gotten used to the close conditions or, having now defined them as panic attacks, was somehow able to head them off), my feet continued to feel like dead fish.
In the morning, we didn’t hear birds, just howling wind, rain through the trees, and rain against our tent. As we hiked, we listened to the Gore-Tex of our hoods swishing next to our ears, the squish of saturated earth under our feet, the clanging of our trekking poles as we clumsily rushed along, and each other’s gasps of frustration and cold. At higher altitudes, sleet and hail pummeled us and our feet crunched over ice. I wore my rain pants, but Duffy wore shorts (saving his rain pants as an extra dry layer to wear at night), and his legs turned ruddy and raw.
During two of our rainy nights between Snoqualmie and Skykomish we camped with Ken and Marcia and a gnomelike section hiker, Mike. I think it gave us all comfort to have company in such extreme conditions.
On our 125th night, as we made camp by Deception Lakes, I noticed steam rising off Mike’s tent like a sauna. “He’s using his stove in his tent,” I whispered to Duffy, shocked and intrigued. We’d been taking turns standing outside in the rain over our stove when we cooked dinner, or chose not to cook at all. I knew that using a stove in a tent was unsafe, as tents and sleeping bags are highly flammable. But I envied the warmth Mike must have been feeling. Warm, dry air in our tent would be blissful, and perhaps some of our clothes might even dry out. Soon all three tents, clustered in a muddy site next to the lakes, were emanating steam.
The next day, we headed down to Stevens Pass (at 4,062 feet in elevation), from which we’d access the small railroad town of Skykomish, fourteen miles to the west on Highway 2.
As we walked along the flooded trail, we saw bowling ball-sized mushrooms in fluorescent orange hues clinging to the dank bark of huge trees whose boughs were hanging heavy with raindrops. Stumbling down the trail, I tripped over exposed roots and hidden stones. My feet whizzed out from underneath me too many times to count, landing me on my butt in puddles and mud bogs. Each time I cried out like it was the first. Finally, after getting lost, we scrambled over a highway barrier onto the road’s shoulder. Cars whizzed by, spraying water. We stuck out our thumbs for a ride, but it seemed hopeless. Who in their right minds would pick up two drenched, muddy hikers and their equally sodden packs?
Headlights blazing, windshield wipers whipping, car after car sped by without so much as a sidelong glance. Suddenly, though, the traffic ceased, and in the distance we made out the shape of a van. Its headlights were off and it was going only about twenty miles an hour. Behind it, cars were lined up, crawling. “That’s our ride,” Duffy joked. I knew he was right and was excited and scared all at once. If anyone was going to pick us up, it was going to be the wacko driving that broken-down van. We’d learned a lot about hitchhiking since May.
But the van drove by us, causing me to let out a cry.
“What? Is he crazy?” Duffy exclaimed several seconds later. I followed his eyes. The van had stopped about a hundred yards beyond us and was backing up, on the highway. “He’s either going to give us a ride or kill himself,” Duffy said. “Come on!” He started running to the van. Horns honked and brakes screeched.
“Hey, you guys need a ride?” asked a pale, sunken-eyed man of perhaps thirty-five.
“Yeah, Skykomish?” Duffy replied hurriedly.
“Get in, throw them packs on the backseat.”
I looked at the backseat; it was clearly the guy’s bed. An old tan and orange sleeping bag and a grungy flat pillow lay on it.
“Lemme just move your stuff,” I said, not wanting to get his home muddy.
“Nah, just get in.” I felt bad, but Duffy was already in the front seat and the van was beginning to roll, so I jumped on his bed and slammed the door shut.
Without so much as a glance in the mirror, our driver pulled out into the highway and started cruising—at a mean twenty-five miles an hour. The rain was coming down harder, and without headlights or windshield wipers the road ahead appeared as just a blur. Only the oncoming headlights warned us of curves.
“Man, I don’t feel right,” our driver groaned. “I’ve been up in the hot springs for a couple days. Man, I don’t feel right.”
Duffy looked at him. “Hot springs?”
“A couple days?” It was my turn to groan.
“Yeah, Kennedy Hot Springs, you should check ‘em out, man, you’d dig ‘em. But I think I stayed in too long. I started hallucinating and shit.” As he spoke, he looked right at Duffy, who, in turn, stared at the road ahead, as if willing the Himalayan-sweater-clad hippy to look where he was going. Later, I learned that the Kennedy Hot Springs (where clothing is optional) are filled with “ill-rumored” water. In fact, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, hikers should avoid them in the summer “when the bacteria count can be high.”
“I, uh, like your van,” I said, trying to change the subject.
“Got it for a hundred bucks and been living in it for a few months. Brakes and lights ain’t so hot, but for a ‘68 Ford it runs pretty good.”
“How about the windshield wipers?” Duffy asked, “They work?”
“Man, I need a jolt or something. I’m out of it.”
The next few minutes felt like eons. Finally we pulled into the gas station in Skykomish, a town so small that it doesn’t have a grocery store, drugstore, barber, or doctor. We both jumped out of the van like it was on fire while our hallucinating chauffeur went inside to get a cup of coffee. Duffy had urged him to get Gatorade rather than a diuretic like coffee, but there was no reasoning with this guy; he was, as he said, out of it.
When we checked into the Sky River Inn, the motherly woman at the front desk said she�
��d wash our clothes for us if we brought them over. So, as usual, Duffy sat naked on the bed while I threw on my sundress and delivered our muddy, wet bundle. We hung our tent, rain fly, and sleeping bags all over the room and made macaroni and cheese on the stove. Ken and Marcia were in the room adjoining ours, and the section-hiker, Mike, came in to use our shower before catching a Greyhound bus home. Later, we opened the door between our room and Ken and Marcia’s and, sitting on our respective beds, we chatted through the doorway, reliving the deluge and watching bad movies on TV.
The next day, the sun came out and we laid our gear out on the grass behind our rooms, which were near the Skykomish River. On any other occasion, we would have been ecstatic to spend the day reading and writing by a river, but with our trail days being numbered, we were grumpy that the sun had only decided to come out while we were in town.
Back in our room, we quietly sorted through our second-to-last re-supply package. Now, with our journey coming to an end, everything smacked bittersweet. We’d been on the PCT for 127 days but it felt like a lifetime. I could barely remember what life was like before the PCT. Due to the rain, we were behind schedule and would have to skip another section of trail—ninety-seven miles, in fact. Neither of us was happy about it, and the decision hung over us like another dark stormy cloud.
“What if we hiked thirty-five miles per day, no rest days?” I suggested.
“Chiggy, be realistic. If we had perfect weather—maybe. But probably not; the terrain’s going to get rough, and with foul weather, we’ll never make it.”
I knew he was right, and while Duffy was running errands I was on the phone with Greyhound, figuring out the schedule between Skykomish and Lake Chelan, where we could take a ferry to Stehekin and pick up the PCT at mile 2,570.
“When we reach Canada, let’s turn around and hike back,” I joked.
“Oh, yeah, you wanna go back to the desert?” Duffy asked.
Blistered Kind Of Love Page 27